Irving Blog

“Deep, deep problems” on Irving City Council repulsed city manager pick; UPDATED

The heir apparent to Irving City Hall blamed dysfunction on the City Council and a toxic media environment for his decision to turn down the job.

“I think the ongoing situation in Irving is horrible,” Steve Sarkozy said this morning, a day after officials learned he had withdrawn his application to become city manager, despite backing from most council members.

Sarkozy ran the city hall in Bellevue, Wash., until last year when—in his telling—council turmoil drove him from the job. He told me Irving’s situation was even worse.

Steve Sarkozy (left) largely blamed council members Joe Putnam (center) and Allan Meagher (right) for driving him from Irving

“You have two council members who have not been involved in the [city manager search] process and who have knowingly pulled out of that process,” Sarkozy said. “That’s an indication there’s some deep, deep problems there with people not interested in the good of the community.”

Sarkozy was talking about Joe Putnam and Allan Meagher. The two council members missed or skipped all interviews in the city manager search, then accused their colleagues of breaking transparency laws when they settled on Sarkozy in a private meeting last month.

Both council members have said they would rather scrap the months-long search and keep the interim city manager in the job longer. (Incidentally, that looks more likely now that Sarkozy is out of the running.)

Putnam defended his absence, telling me: “It would be hypocritical for me to interview people I know I was not going to vote for.” Meagher has said he missed the last set of interviews to care for a sick child. But he did not immediately return a call about Sarkozy’s comments. [Update: Meagher has since replied. Please see the end of this post.]

Sarkozy, with a soft voice and polite tone, also blamed the media (i.e., me) for Irving’s recent bout of chaos.

He complained about leaks to the public—including from a private council meeting last month, when most members told staff to begin pursuing his hire. And he complained about the focus on Putnam and Meagher’s “marginal” concerns about possible transparency violations at that meeting, while their decisions to skip it got relatively little press.

“You folks are targeting the wrong issue,” Sarkozy said. “You’re making a big deal out of the small things and letting the big stuff go by.”

Sarkozy said he decided to bow out early Saturday, the day after Mayor Beth Van Duyne called a public vote for this week to name a city manager finalist.

With no solid backing on the council for any candidate but Sarkozy, no one can say if that vote will happen anymore.

Putnam, meanwhile, is more optimistic that another vote this week—to extend interim City Manager Steve McCullough’s contract—could pass, when it had been nearly certain to fail before Sarkozy’s withdrawal.

As for that withdrawal, Putnam called it “pettiness.”

“People want to blame me and Allan for being the cause of problems we didn’t have anything to do with,” he said. “If that’s his attitude, he’s better off somewhere besides Irving. Because we are who we are.”

Update 4:30 p.m: Joe Putnam intentionally skipped the candidate interviews because he wants to scrap the search process and keep the interim city manager. Allan Meagher also wants to keep the interim on longer, but he gave very different reasons for missing the two interviews.

Meagher, a divorcee, told me the first round of interviews fell on the Christmas break week he had with his children.

He said he had planned to attend the second interviews in January, but his son fell ill, missing school and requiring care.

“I understand the interview process is very important,” Meagher said. “But it’s more important to take care of a sick child than interview when seven other council members are there.”

Responding to Sarkozy’s withdrawal and criticism of his absence, Meagher said: “If he doesn’t understand family values and working with his employees, he doesn’t need to be in the city of Irving.”

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